Interview with David Ball about Blue Dwarf, going 13 years strong…
So David, give us a little introduction to Blue Dwarf. I assume it is related to the classic Red Dwarf Television show?
It’s based on a British TV show called Red Dwarf which is a scifi comedy about a small group of characters adventuring in space, trying to survive. When I started Blue Dwarf I wanted a game that had the same feel, but didn’t want to be limited to the few main characters, so used the same universe and set the game on a similar ship, the Red Dwarf’s sister ship. Read More
Dungeons and dragons is a fantasy based game set in a medieval style world filled with magic and monsters. Players are essentially heroes for hire doing quests for various individuals, defeating monsters and finding treasure. A lot of the basic framework I use is from classic D&D. The first post for example was a typical D&D starting point, a group of strangers enter a town and whilst there monsters attack. In addition we have a very diverse group of characters but between us we cover all the traditional D&D roles.
The Simm launched in 1995 as the USS Pegasus in the now defunct Seventh Fleet. Mark Casey then moved the simm to Tango Fleet when he started it in 1996. I joined the simm a few months later, and then took over as CO in 1997. It’s ran continuously under my command since then. 
It’s worth noting that we don’t just have contributions coming from participants, although many of our sponsors do play the game. Several are just friends of the game or fans of the idea of collaborative real-time storytelling. Honestly, I’d prefer to see more patrons supporting our creative efforts from outside the playerbase. It just feels so unfair sometimes, going back to the same well and asking for help from the same people, time and again. I’ve been very lucky, though. We have some extremely supportive players. All that said: It is absolutely voluntary. There’s no price of admission and no membership dues. You can join the saga and never contribute a dime – you’ll still be welcome. 
Roleplay primarily focuses on military starships and their crews. We’re just coming out of a multi-year metaplot that was war-centric, so we’re starting to shift focus onto independent adventure plots on the dangerous frontiers of the major empires and improving the diversity of plot types and character types.
